Nandini Goswami reports in her analysis published in Daily News and Analysis, that Indian Goverment, through India Tea Board, is pushing the tea producers to produce and export more Orthodox variety of tea. Orthodox, as we all know, is the process by which most of Darjeeling tea is produced. On the other hand, the Assam tea is mostly produced in CTC variety - CTC stands for Cut, Tear, and Curl, the process by which the tea produced is significantly bolder/stronger.

India produces the largest quantity of CTC tea, mostly for Indian consumption because the Indian Chai is typically brewed with CTC tea, and never with orthodox tea. But while CTC sells well in India, prices in India have been rather weak, and producers have been looking to exports for greater profits. But, most ex-Indian markets prefer orthodox variety to CTC and India has been loosing ground in exports to other countries such as China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Argentina. Last year, reports Nandini, Indian tea exports fell to 180 million kgs. Nandini quotes some interesting statistics from India Tea Board…

• Global orthodox exports tea amounts to 1,000 million kg with a market share of 44%
• Sri Lanka and China lead with 63% share of this market. With 100 million kg export, India amounts to around 10% share
• Globally, CTCs have 39% share (amounting to 886 million kgs) with India and Kenya combined have 80% share, the balance being produced by North African countries.
• Global market share of green teas is only 17% (amounting to 386 million kgs)

Since India has dominant share in the CTC exports, the only way to grow Indian exports would be to increase the orthodox exports. Our own experience shows that indeed in the US CTC teas don’t sell much, as much as Orthodox teas, although CTCs do get used to a great extent in the RTD (ready to drink tea).